don’t know if i even understand the basics.
greg
Greg,
- Divisions - Section of a prototype railroad. The railroad is split up into geographic sections for better control. When I worked for the CB&Q in the late 60’s, the Aurora Division ran from Chicago through Aurora to Galesburg, and up to St Paul, MN(including all of the branch lines attached to that trackage). I worked from North La Crosse to St Paul and this was known as the La Crosse Subdivision.
- Branch Lines - Usually a less busy line off if a major division. For example the Rockford Branch. from Flag Center to Rockford. Flag Center is on the Aurora Division main line, and the branch goes to Rockford.
Jim
These terms are subject to variations between railroads.
They describe how the geography of a railroad is organized.
Division is the easiest since its defined in most rule books as the portion of the railorad under the direction of a Superintendent.
A subdivision is portion of a division.
A branch is a portion of a division also. It implies a secondary route, but not always. On the Reading the line between Pottsville and Philadelphia was the Main Line and every other route was a “branch” regardless of tonnage. On the MP (and current UP) there were officially no “branches” every route was a subdivision, but secondary routes were still called “branches” unofficially.
District is a term also used. Its use varies considerably. On some roads it is the equivalent of a subdivision, on others it is a group of divisions.
Divisions can be as small as a single large terminal or can encompass a thousand miles of branches. Subdivisions can be a few miles long or hundreds of miles long.
A large modern railroad may be organized to have an overall head of transportation, a vice president. Then ther may be regions headed by a general manager, VP or AVP. Each region will consist of several divisions headed by Superintendents. On an older, smaller railroad the regional level would be omitted. The Superintendent is the official authorized to issue discipline in most train employee labor agreements and in old line rule books, train orders would be issued over the superintendent’s initials.
A division is both a geographical and organizational portion of a railroad. A branch is a geographical name of a secondary route.
i assume every railroad can have different definitions for the same thing
but if you were looking at maps, what attributes of a railroad would you pick out to say this looks like a division from here to there or a branch over here?
what attributes would make you describe a section of a railroad as a branch, and what would it have to have to be described as a division? I assume it has to be a division or branch
i assume a division would have one or more engine terminals. I assume there are yards at most terminals, but not necessarily an engine terminal at all yards. would a branch have a yard?
hope you see how little i know
thanks - greg
There is no way to know for sure from looking at a map. It is a management definition. What are you trying to do?
Really nothing you can see from a map regarding divisions (unless it was a railroad map that listed divisions ).
For example one railroad I worked for had 12 divisions one year, 36 divisions several years later and 24 divisions several years after that. Same railroad, same routes, they just divided it up differently.
Subdivisons or branches may be a bit easier, sine they typically run from between major terminals, crew change points and junctions. What I asume you are calling a branch is pretty easy. It runs from the end of the line to the junction with the “main line”.
A division is a collection of subdivisions and or branches. A branch is part of a division. A subdivision is part of a division.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Yes.
Maybe.
A division may have a major yard (some don’t). A major yard might have a service track but not a shop. A branch may have one or more yards. For example the old MP Arkansas division had one major yard at Memphis, TN, but that wasn’t on its most heavily traveled route. It had a small shop there. It had 6 other small yards. The old MP Baytown Sub was what you would call a branch and had 3 yards but no servicing or shop facilities. On the other ha
You really need to research your particular prototype railroads history to understand what they determine as a division, district, branch, and mainline. For an example take the PRR. They started in Philly and either absorbed already established roads or built new lines. Then they started in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and so on and had what they called Lines East (east of Pittsburgh) and Lines West (west of Pittsburgh). Both operated as separate railroads for years. Each one was built up of older railroads either bought or absorbed into the collectives of both. Each one of the older roads was considered a branch. When they finally got it together instead of Lines East / Lines West they broke up the whole conglomerate into Divisions. Each division still had the branch lines and each division also had control districts. So in order to answer your question you must understand how your railroad grew.
Pete
i’m just trying to better understand the general use of these terms so that i can better understand what i’m actually modeling and better understand what i read ab
Sorta.
A division is the portion of the railroad that is supervised by a superintendent.
A subdivison is a portion of the railroad designated by timetable.
A division consists of multiple subdivisions.
A branch is another term for a subdivision and may or may not be an official railroad term. For example the UP has no “branches” in the timetable. Everything is a subdivision. The Reading on the other hand had no subdivisions. Everything was either the main line (not “a” but “the”) or a branch.
A main line is a colloquial term that is not an official railroad term. You will not see "main line’ used in any rule book or timetable, except where the name of the subdivision is the Main Line (e.g PRR and RDG).
The difference between a main line and a branch has nothing to do with yards or engines or servicing facilities. It has to do with cars and tonnage. A “main line” is a route that carries more cars and more tonnage than a “branch”. Both however could be called subdivisions. The difference is tonnage (or more properly gross ton miles).
[quote]
would it be fair to say a mainline (in general) is a route between (engine) terminals where the destination for a train is a different terminal than the one is originates at and the engine is typically serviced at that destination terminal before being put back in service on another train.
Stepping into the “Way-Back Machine”, when it was N&W (not yet NS), here in Roanoke there were three “Divisions” and one “Terminal”. Each had its own Superintendent. There was The Norfolk (Roanoke to Norfolk & Roanoke to Durham, NC), the Radford (Roanoke to Bluefield, WVa. & Roanoke to Bristol, TN), the Shenandoah (Roanoke to Hagerstown, MD & Roanoke to Winston-Salem, NC) Divisions and Roanoke Terminal. Each of the Divisions were divided into “Districts”. For the most part, each District had its own crew seniority roster. Roanoke Terminal also having its own seniority roster.
For example, The Shenandoah Div. had the Roanoke District that went from Roanoke to Shenadoah, Va. where trains changed crews with those of the Hagerstown District who took the train from Shenadoah to Hagerstown. Also, Winston District crews handled trains from Roanoke to Winston-Salem, NC. With the exception (remember we are riding in the Way-Back Machine and things have since changed) of passenger service and/or crew shortages, crews stayed on their assigned seniority district.
Branch lines are just that. They are branches of railroad that veer off of the mainline on a certain district. For example, On the Roanoke District, we have the Cloverdale Branch. Trains would come out of Roanoke heading north, leave the mainline at Cloverdale, Va. and run nine miles to the Lone Star Cement Plant where they would do the work and return to Roanoke.
On the Radford Division’s Bristol line, they had the famous Abingdon Branch, the Galax Branch and North Carolina Branch. They aso had the Catawba branch close by in Salem, Va.
Hope this helps
In this example, “district” is the same as “subdivision” . The ATSF also used "district’ for subdivision.
On the MP a “district” as a region which was a collection of Divisions.
So on the MP the hierarchy was:
System - District - Division -Subdivision - Industrial lead
On the SP the hierarchy was:
System - Region - Division - Subdivision - Branch
The Reading Co. hierarchy was :
System - Division - Main Line or Branch
The current UP hierarchy is:
System - Region - Service Unit - Subdivision - Industrial lead
Basically a division is a a management area under a superintendent. It will be a contiguous section of the railroad that has a common traffic flow or shares a common terminal.
A district, subdivison or branch typically runs between major junctions or terminasl. If “branches” and subs or districts are used, branches are the lower volume lines that are usually not through routes. Subdivisions are shown in the timetable.
Bigger yards and engine terminals will be on heavier volume routes. There is no requirement for a yard on any given subdivision or branch. There is no requirement for an engine terminal on any given subdivision or branch. The locations of engine terminals and yards is purely driven by the traffic and train flows. The boundaries of a subdivision or division may have more to do with crew districts (the territory over which a crew may operate based on their labor agreements) than with engine terminasl or yards.
Divisons can break anywhere on a subdivision, at the end, at a junction, 25 miles from the end, wherever the railroad
Remember that many of the men who built the railroads after the Civil War were former generals and officers, so their use of “division” may be related to the military use of the term.
Remember also that railroads had been around since the 1830’s and railroad divisions predated the Civil War. Not saying that the military didn’t influence the pre-war railroads or that the term didn’t possibly have military origins. The influx of Civil War veterans certainly accelerated the expansion of the railroads.
there’s a thread entitled Operations: No Branch Line, Now What? and a magazine article Build a branch line on your layout. I’m trying to better understand the distinction being made in discussions like this.
But i appreciate all the comments, there certainly have helped
greg
Hi Greg,
I posted that thread that you referred to above.
The thread was started as a result of a comment made by a forum member on another thread about local operations fouling the main line.
Here is the text of that comment.
“In most urban/industrial areas very few industry sidings are served by turnouts directly on the mainline, even if the industry is right along the mainline. More typically industrial areas are served by separate “belt” or branch line trackage. Or, in the case of industries directly on the mainline, there is often a passing siding, sometimes very long, with the individual industrial sidings branching off from the siding, not the mainline”.
Rich
One issue is that the “branch” being discussed in the “Operations: No Branch Line…” isn’t a branch, its a lead or a running track. A branch goes someplace else. As described in Rich’s quote below indicates what was being described as a “branch” just runs parallel to the main track. That’s not a “branch”.
Rich, one thing you may have overlooked in your discussion is, “In most urban/industrial areas very few industry sidings are served by turnouts directly on the mainline…”. What is your biggest industry? A farm.
How many farms are located in “…urban/industrial areas…”? Location, location, location.
Dave H.
Dave, I don’t want to hijack the OP’s thread to discuss my layout, but let me just say that the farm is located at the extreme end of my layout, away from the urban/industrial area. The farm is simply a transition from a large city environment to a countryside setting.
Rich
Maybe “location, .location, location” was the wrong phrase, maybe the more appropriate one would be “…context, context, context…”
As has been mentioned several times in this thread, the era and railroad has a large bearing on the discussion on “branches”.
In my brief 30+ years working for a real railroad I have seen so many twists and turns on how things operate its amazing. Pretty much any 10-20 year span of US railriading has truly dramatic changes in rules, operations, laws and equipment. While I am perfectly fine discussing generalities, don’t be suprised if there are contradictions. Unless your narrow it down to a time and place, there will always be contradictions because it is a wide and varied industry.
The UP just celebrated 150 years of operation. How many other industries can say they are 150 years old and still at the top of their game? How many still exist? How many are still doing business under the same name?
Re the OP, maybe it would help to think of it this way…
When the railroads starting building west of the Mississippi River, they had wood burning steam engines that couldn’t go very far before they needed attention (clean out the fire / ash, lubrication etc.). Plus they couldn’t go very fast for a variety of reasons (lack of power, lack of airbrakes - not safe going really fast if you can’t stop). So a freight train generally could only cover about 100 miles in 8-10 hours. So about every 100 miles, the railroad’s mainline would have division point yards, where engines could be serviced and crews could be changed. It would have a superintendent and staff, and other employees working at a station, roundhouse, shop buildings etc. In time you’d often have a town developing around it. In later times, as speeds increased, several of these old small divisions might become subdivisions in a new larger division.
Once you had the mainline in place, you needed traffic to fill it. Railroads would build branchlines to reach from the main out to areas needing rail service, like farming areas where wheat, animals, fruits and vegetables or other products were being grown. Each branchline would normally be a part of a division with trains running from the division point yard to the end of the branch and back.
Also, divisions can play a role in seniority. On some railroads, an engineer’s seniority only was in affect in his division, and if he moved to a different division, he might lose his seniority and not be able to hold as good a train as he would on his old division. It was different from one railroad to another. On some a man in division A might be able to hold a job in division A or B, but couldn’t move to division C or D without going to the bottom of the seniority roster.
Staying in the steam era for a few…it sounds like crews and locomotives were assigned to a division and generally did not leave it? Would an engine crew be assigned a particular locomotive, similar to having an assigned caboose? For a modeler that is proto-free lancing, would it be appropriate to have a major locomotive facility at a point where two divisions meet? Does the term ‘division point’ mean a place where two divisions meet?